The AvA Connection

🐝 The Weekly Buzz (3 Entertainment Industry Headlines That Actually Matter)

1) The ‘Living Wage for Musicians Act’ would guarantee a penny per stream but double your streaming bill. Is it a good thing?

• The obvious: Artists would win:

  • Right now, Streamers pay fractions of a cent per stream, most of which gets swallowed by labels.

  • This bill would guarantee Artists see $$. Insert joke about that indie act being able to quit their Silver Lake barista job.

• Subscription prices would rise by $6 for a $12 per month, with direct payments to Artists.

  • Labels and publishers (the rights holders) would be cut out of the funnel. They of course will lobby hard against it.

• Evening the playing field

  • It would create a transparent royalty pool with a 1M stream cap.

  • Artist/Tracks would stop earning after they hit that threshold. It undercuts the majors’ top earners, which is exactly how labels balance their books. Indie artists would win here.

2) AI company Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to settle claims it trained AI on pirated books.

Authors who join the deal get a cut of the fund plus $3,000 per book used. The case nearly went to trial over seven million titles, with potential damages topping $150,000 per work. Even in the age of AI, nothing scares like a class-action with math.

📚 WILD: Anthropic bought millions of books, tearing off the bindings and scanning each page before feeding the digitized versions into its AI model.

3) Is TikTok really pushing music forward?

• The 2025 ‘Song of the Summer’ was released 10 years ago is Jess Glyne’s ‘Hold My Hand.’

• The rest of the top 5:

  • Black Eyed Peas - ‘Rock That Body’ (2009)

  • ‘Dame Un Gurr’ - Fantomel and Kate Linn (2025)

  • Jeezy’s - ‘Soul Survivor’ (2005)

  • Connie Francis’ - ‘Pretty Little Baby’ from all the way back in 1962.

4) Poaching happens daily, but this one probably stung:

💼 AvA Job Board

Our new job board features 119+ early career roles in Entertainment:

Some standouts:

💼 Book Publishing Assistant - CAA - Apply Here

💼 Assistant, Tennis - WME - Apply Here

💼 Account Coordinator - Warner Bros. Discovery - Apply Here

💼 Marketing Production Coordinator - NBC Sports - Apply Here

💼 Market Development Coordinator - Universal Music Group - Apply Here

💼 Assistant, Music - UTA - Apply Here

💼 Video Production & Planning Coordinator - New York Times - Apply Here

💼 Content Planning Analyst - Sony Pictures - Apply Here

💼 Film/TV/Digital Media Coordinator - BMI - Apply Here

💼 Contract Admin - The Walt Disney Company - Apply Here

💼 Assistant, IMG Models - WME - Apply Here

💼 Video Producer/Editor - Atlanta Hawks - Apply Here

💼 Ticketing Coordinator - Live Nation - Apply Here

💼 Multimedia Producer - Fox Entertainment - Apply Here

📚 AVA Recs: 🎧

The Town’s live pod with Adam Aron (CEO of AMC) broke down how the theatre chain is feeling about the future state of the box office: always pretty positive, how streamers are thinking about windowing their films, and if the ad slots before movies are getting shorter?

AND on the theatre note, check out Variety’s new breakdown of an NRG (National Research Group) report that claims Gen Alpha will “save the movies” and are actually craving in-person experience’s HMM.

👋 See you back here on Wednesday

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This newsletter is written by Warner Bailey and edited by Riley Furey and Dominik Sansevere.

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